


Dealing in Death

by QM_Vox



Category: The Sigil Series - Peri Akman
Genre: Animal Death, Assassination, Child Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Empathic assault, Extortion, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Imprisonment, Intrigue, Magic, Military, Military Training, Muteness, Original Character(s), Originally Posted on Tumblr, Sailing, Telekinesis, Teleportation, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:53:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25301164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QM_Vox/pseuds/QM_Vox
Summary: Patriotic teen Monika of Westkill is apprenticed to one of the mysterious Crimson Daggers, the warlocks who serve as special forces to Grevelt's government, and learns the hard way that others have good reason to hate their country.
Kudos: 1





	1. What You Think of Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Peri Akman](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Peri+Akman).



**Westkill Academy, Westkill. Spring Apprentice Exams**

Something was wrong. How Monika knew this when she couldn’t tell you what ‘right’ was supposed to look like at knife-point was a bit beyond her, but she knew something was wrong the same way she knew her dreads were in her eyes or the ball of energy in front of her wouldn’t stop twitching and whipping around her.

The pale warlock had something to do with it.

If someone told Monika that the pale warlock had been pulled from a novel cover and brought to life, she might just believe it. She’d been introduced as Deirdre of Shorne, the Silencer, and amidst the rainbow of color and smiles around her she stood out like a jagged knife in a toybox, with her cloak of iron ringlets (dully grey-black, going to rust red at the edges in a way that almost seemed deliberate), her heavy metal boots and gloves - gauntlets? - and that _belt_ , a steel mesh affair festooned with vials, syringes, and strange rods tipped in some kind of bulb. Monika thought they looked like the budding flowers on the school grounds, complete with thorns.

The other professional warlocks, all of them here to potentially select an apprentice, had been asking questions of the other students, observing them with some interest, fidgeting in their seats, and generally being living people with their asses in chairs not quite made for living people. Not Deirdre though. She’d been staring at Monika ever since the testing had started, with an uncomfortable intensity. Monika just knew she was going to have nightmares about it later. Something about that stare wasn’t right.

“How far does the ball usually move for you?” one of the other professionals asked, jolting Monika out of her reverie. She brushed her hair out of her face and straightened up.

“Far, sir,” Monika answered. “I can keep it going in a room for a long time, usually. I had it going for more than an hour once, until…”

“Until?”

Behind Monika, her friend Kip spoke up: “I opened the window to let some air in.”

Everyone had a small laugh, the kids nervously, the adults with a certain warmth.

But not the pale warlock. Monika met her stare, just trying to get her to _stop_ , and was surprised to see Deirdre raise her eyebrows. There was a clinking and rustling, metal-on-metal, that came from Deirdre standing up.

“Tell me what you think of death,” Deirdre asked. Her voice was light, but oddly rough, like the scrape of a boot against fine gravel.

“I hardly think -” Head Raul, master of the Academy and minister of the test, began, only to immediately stop. Monika and her peers stared in shock; there were tears in Raul’s eyes, and his throat worked furiously as he choked back sudden sobs.

Deirdre turned her head ever-so-slightly. “If I want your opinions on my work, or what I need in an apprentice, I will give them to you. Interrupt me again and I will mop this floor with your sanity, pencil-pusher. Now,” here she turned those dead green eyes back to Monika, “tell me what you think of death.”

Monika swallowed. The other adults were looking between Deirdre and Raul, some angry, others with wide eyes and shaking hands, but none of them made a move to interrupt them. Monika opened her mouth, but no words came out.

The student warlock took a deep breath to compose herself. “Death is bad, ma’am.”

“Interesting sentiment from someone who seems hard-up to go to war,” Deirdre commented, gesturing with the packet of student information in her hand. “Or someone who’s been in as many fights as you.”

“That’s not - soldiers protect people!”

“With what, harsh language?” Deirdre’s eyebrows raised again, lending an air of life to her dead eyes. “Or is it that death is a buyer’s market for you and you figure you can get it cheap on the front.”

“Deirdre -” Another professional began, this one at the edge of their group.

“How badly do you want my attention?” the pale warlock asked without turning her head. The man who’d spoken sagged in his seat and didn’t answer.

“I don’t want to die, ma’am,” Monika replied into the silence that followed. “I just want to make a difference.”

Deirdre scoffed and sat back down. No one else seemed inclined to move or speak, but there was still testing to get on with. After a few long, agonizing minutes, Head Raul managed to pull himself together enough to thank Monika for her time and invite her to sit back down. She felt like her heart was going to hammer its way out of her chest and go whipping around the room the way the energy ball always did when she got near it.

Those dead green eyes only stopped staring at Monika after the professional warlocks adjourned to the next room.

“Tell me what you think of death,” Monika repeated to herself under her breath. She went to ask Kip about it, but then some of her other friends gave her playful punches on the arm and started to talk about how they thought the tests went, and she let it go. How bad could it be?

*

“What was the meaning of that _display_? We are meant to be preparing these children for their futures.”

Deirdre shrugged. “Death is a future. A remarkably popular one; I’m told everyone ends up having it.”

“You are a disgrace to our proud institutions,” Raul snapped in reply. “I and these teachers did not spend all of this time raising these students only to watch some wretch like you ruin them. There are consequences for your actions.”

Deirdre’s soft, bitter laugh was almost swallowed up by the jingling of her cloak. “No, there aren’t,” she said in a soft voice. “And you know exactly why. Take it up with him if you have a problem with me, do us both a favor. If you do drop by, tell me what he thought of death.”

The pale warlock took a knife from her belt, a thin stiletto that could almost be mistaken for a letter opener, and dropped it in the envelope she was preparing, next to her letter of introduction to her prospective student.

“What are you doing now?” Head Raul asked, exhaustion stealing the fury from his voice. “What mad whim is this?”

“I need to see how she reacts. Do cheer up, pencil-pusher. I may yet not want her.”

*

Some part of Monika was surprised when she received the oddly heavy packet. After that display with the Silencer she’d thought for sure that she was in for another six months, and maybe a more normal, or at least less threatening, test. Instead she got the same sort of thick envelope that everyone else did, this one weighted down with something dense. Monika flipped it over and found a message on the back: “Watch Your Fingers”. Fascinated, Monika slowly opened the envelope.

There was a knife inside, a thin-bladed stiletto sitting point-up in the envelope against a sheaf of papers.

 _Tell me what you think about death_.

Gingerly, Monika removed the blade from the envelope and laid it across her lap so that she could shake the papers loose and look at them. The form at the front was pretty standard, though as she read Monika felt that strange sense of something being wrong come back to twist her guts.

NAME: Deirdre of Shorne

AGE: 27 (Deceased)

GENDER: Female

FEATS: Ruin, sorrow, espionage

Deceased? Monkia frowned and looked up, and was shocked to see Deirdre standing in the corner of the room, arms folded across her chest, dead green eyes resting on Monika. The pale warlock’s gaze drifted meaningfully down at the papers in Monika’s hands. Monika startled and looked back down; she put the first page at the back of the pile and blinked at the second.

“Dear Monika of Westkill,

Do something.”

Pages upon pages were behind it, a dozen or more, all covered in names in tiny handwriting. Monika looked from the brief letter and the near-black pages of names, then back up to Deirdre.

She stood up all at once, scattering the papers but catching the stiletto by its hilt in one hand. Her fellow students pulled back from the noise and then gasped in surprise when they saw her friend striding towards Deirdre with a fierce expression on her face.

“You got somethin’ to say to me, girl?” Deirdre asked in a light voice, curiosity bringing a shadow of life to her green eyes.

Monika bit her lip in indecision, and then held up the knife with its tip pointing up between the two of them. “Tell me what _you_ think of death.”

Deirdre laughed, and gave Monika a grin. “I think being dead and being alive aren’t exclusive. I think a lot of people die a long time before they’re buried, and I think I’m one of ‘em. You wanna sign up with that, girl?”

“They’re all afraid of you,” Monika said. “Is it because you’re a great soldier?”

The pale warlock shook her head. “But I _am_ a pretty solid warrior. If you want to learn the arts of murder, you won’t find a better teacher in this pack of jackals. Even the military types want good girls to put in boots, not patriots.”

Monika looked back at her friends, and then at Deirdre again. “You’re saying I could say no?”

“ _I_ could say no.”

“Well…” Monika stood up straight. “Don’t. Take me for your apprentice.”

That wide grin again. “We’ll get along just fine. Go say your goodbyes now. Once the ceremony is over, we’ve got places to be.”

“Places -”

“I know that wasn’t a request, stripling.”

Deirdre slipped back into the other room with the rest of the professionals before Monika could decide if she wanted to argue further. She looked down at the knife still in her hand, and then went to scoop up her papers.

*

Deirdre hadn’t been kidding. The moment the ceremony was done she gave Monika just enough time to pack her meager possessions and then the two of them got into a coach waiting at the front of the school grounds. The coach driver, dressed so much like a butler that Monika had to look at him three times just to be sure, introduced himself as Lee Shen of Javier, “factotum.”

(“Man of all work,” Deirdre explained later. “A sort of professional traveling friend, servant, accountant, and protector.”)

Lee had a travel meal and a bag of candied fruits for Monika, which he gave her with a smile before helping her into the coach. Deirdre seemed content to eat some kind of travel bread that, from the sound of her trying to chew it, may have been some kind of igneous rock.

“We’ve got some decisions to make,” Deirdre told her. “First things first. There’s an island off the shore, just between Vellstride, Westkill, and the Badlands. None of the city-states technically own it, but it’s kept free and clear because _Grevelt_ still does. That’s where we’re heading, to get you supplied, dig deep on your training, see some people. My employer lives there.”

Monika hesitated, one of her fruits in her fingers. “Isn’t the government your employer?”

“Governments are made of people.” Deirdre took a rock-grinding bite of her bread and took her time chewing it to look Monika over. Sometime after the heat death of the universe, she finally swallowed. “So, while we’re en route you can learn to fight, or we can work on unlocking your magic. We’ll need to do both, but not at the same time.”

The pale warlock’s new apprentice blinked. “Why not?”

Deirdre looked out the window. “My master used to beat me until I blacked out - no, don’t say anything, I’m not fucking done - and push me until I collapsed. Now, pretend for a moment that you’re a teacher. What’s the flaw in this technique?”

“It’s sick!”

“True, but no. Try again.” Another gravelly bite of bread.

“I -” Monika shut her mouth. “He…you needed medical treatment?”

“Warmer,” Deirdre agreed. “Think of it as a _teacher_.”

“…You can’t learn anything while you’re unconscious?”

The pale warlock looked back at her student with a wide grin that had no friendliness in it. “There’s the money. I’m not gonna beat you to instruct you, Monika. That’s stupid. _But_ , when it’s time to learn to fight, I am very definitely gonna beat your ass, not because I want to or even because you do or don’t deserve it, but because that’s by way of being the side effect. Combat training is exhausting, draining, and leaves you black and blue. Magical training is also exhausting and draining, and emotionally taxing besides. So while we’re in Lee’s carriage, it’s one or the other. If I wanted you dead I’d’ve killed you in the street.”

“You can’t do that,” Monika asserted.

“How much you wanna bet me?”

Monika set her food aside and stared her new master down. “So why don’t you?”

Deirdre snorted. “You really are a little patriot, aren’t you? There’s a difference between being a bitch and being a sadist, kid. Evil’s a tool in a box that you bring out for the jobs it’s good for, not a toy you wave around whenever you’re bored. Why would I bother killing you, or even hurting you? What do I gain from it?”

“I - you’d - fun?”

“You ever find someone who hurts people for fun, you tell me,” Deirdre said in a low voice. “I make a habit of meeting those people. I like to learn what they think of death.”

The two of them looked out their respective windows for awhile. Monika read the signs they passed, most of them official - Westkill’s status on the border and next to an ocean meant it had a high military presence - and listened to Deirdre wage war on the travel bread she was eating. She glanced over, once, when a new scent caught her nose and blinked when she saw her new master eating tough jerky.

“Why are you -”

“I’d really rather not say,” Deirdre interrupted. “Ask Lee, he deserves to crow about it anyway. You made a decision yet?”

Monika hummed in thought. “Why does combat training involve beating me, if you don’t approve of beating your students?”

“Good question.” Deirdre gestured with her jerky. “First, it’s not beating in the sense of beating your ass black and blue or slapping you around. It’s beating in the sense that to learn how to fight, you have to fight. That means you’re gonna get hit. If you want to fight well, you’re gonna get hit a lot; you have to drill the motions in day after day until they become a reflex, something you can do without thinking. It sucks, but it’s better than looking down and having your insides on the outside because you didn’t put in the work. Too many warlocks never learn how to fight and end up hanging from something’s claws like idiots. I don’t train idiots. But, there’s an upside.”

Monika made the universal ‘oh?’ expression.

“The secondary skills,” the pale warlock elaborated. “Medicine, for instance. How to be aware of and care for your body, how to maintain your weapons. It’s all related, and it’s all good stuff to know. Tell you what: take your time. Think about it. I’m gonna take a nap and get your answer when I wake up.”

Monika blinked. “Just like that? You can just…go to sleep?”

“It’s not magic, kid. It’s a skill you learn when your life is shit and you don’t get to sleep all that often.” Deirdre leaned back, closed her eyes, and just like that she was out like a light.

*

“Master?”

“Mmmf?”

“I’d like to learn how to fight.”

“Remind me when we stop.”

*

Monika took a hit across her jaw that sent her reeling out of the circle of firelight, with stars bursting in her eyes. She brought her fists up to block her face and was rewarded with the impact of a fist against her forearms, and then another one right into her vulnerable gut. The teenager doubled over and hit the dirt with the breath whooshing out of her lungs.

“You’ve got good instincts,” Deirdre said. She wiped a line of blood from her nose and upper lip with the back of her hand. “But you’re reckless. You need patience.”

Monika coughed and spat into the dirt. “You hit pretty hard for someone who said she wasn’t gonna beat me.”

“I did warn you.” Deirdre offered a hand to her student, who took it and stood with some difficulty. “Take a few minutes, _sip_ some water. If you chug it you’ll just throw it up and end up worse than you are now.”

Monika spat again - blood, mainly - and did as she was told, sitting down on a log near the carriage with a heavy groan. Lee passed her a canteen with an encouraging smile, and the teen took a small sip.

“She does mean it,” Lee said to Monika. “Ms. Deirdre trains with me in normal circumstances. It is harsh because she has high standards.”

“What’s the benefit of lower standards?” Monika asked weakly; she touched her ribs and winced.

“Death, usually.” Came her master’s answer. Deirdre sat down herself and opened her own canteen to rehydrate with. “Tell me what you think of death.”

“It’s bad, but some people deserve it,” Monika answered. “People like your master, or invaders.”

The pale warlock laughed into her canteen until she interrupted herself by drinking from it. “Look who found her teeth. Less nervous about impressing me now that we’re bonded, are you? Some people deserve it…who decides, that, exactly? Do I get to decide that? You?”

Monika looked askance at her master. “The government, the, the _law_ , decides that. They have to.”

“Ms. Monika,” Lee began slowly.

“I don’t remember inviting you to my teaching session here Lee,” Deirdre interrupted. “You know I love you, but I will lay your ass out.”

“Of course,” Lee said.

“You don’t agree,” Monika said, feeling her way through the idea. “You don’t think the law should decide. But then who?”

Deirdre shrugged. “I asked _you_ that, stripling. You’re the one eager to fight. You’re the one with the record of brawling at your Academy, a record that’s payin’ off here but is still shadier than a strip of Void in a basement. So if you’re all wet in your nethers to fight people, you tell me who deserves to get fought.”

Monika felt her face get hot, though between the flickering firelight and her dark complexion no one could see the difference. “You can’t just talk to me like that!”

“Or you’ll do what?” Deirdre asked. “Fight me? Let’s entertain that for a minute; what do you get out of throwing hands with me over my choice of language?”

Monika stood. “You _can’t_ ,” she repeated. “What do I get - you can’t just - people have to stand up for themselves!”

“That’s stupid, and your teachers are stupid if you got out the other side of the Academy thinking like that.”

Monika lunged, and it was on. The two went sprawling into the dirt, fists flying. The teen took a shot to her bruised ribs but sheer outrage carried her through while she grappled with her master. She _bit_ and tasted blood, and then took one hit, two, on the right side of her face. A flurry of blows hammered into both sides of her ribs, driving the air from her lungs, making her cough and splutter.

“I give! I give!”

Deirdre stopped mid-punch and settled back, having ended up on top of her student during the brawl. “You get what you wanted?” she asked.

“No,” Monika muttered, through a tight throat.

“Violence is a tool too, kid. You use it for the jobs it’s good for.” Deirdre leaned over to look at the damage. “C’mon, let’s get on those first aid lessons. For what it’s worth, I apologize for talking to you that way. You’re just a kid, goading you like that is cruel.”

“It’s cruel no matter who it is,” Monika whispered.

“Yeah,” Deirdre agreed. “But an adult would have had a chance at finding out what I think of death, wouldn’t they?”

*

They settled into a routine. Every morning they got up, tended to the horses, ate a light breakfast, and then jogged alongside the carriage for miles, with Lee yelling encouragement to Monika. At night they practiced, with fists, with wooden knives and wooden practice blades, with half-staves and a crossbow kept in a trunk built into one of the carriage seats. And at the end of it there was always that same question. No, not a question, an order.

Tell me what you think of death.

Monika grew to hate that demand as she’d hated nothing else in her life. No answer she gave seemed to satisfy Deirdre or earn anything but leading questions and accusations. That brawl they had the first night was just the first of several, none of which Monika won.

“You know, this stops whenever you’re ready to make it stop,” Deirdre commented the third night, sitting on top of her student’s abused ribs. “If you didn’t want your belief systems challenged you shoulda washed out and become a farmer.”

Monika had spat into the dust of the road. “You could make it stop. You could order me to stop.”

“I need a partner, not a slave. I could have picked one of those other idiots for that.”

They’d had a second fight about that one. Monika lost a tooth over it.

The hard living changed the girl, callusing her knuckles and palms, giving her hard muscle, changing her idea of hardship. When they’d first set out, Monika struggled to train for long periods; now she worked with weights inside of the carriage while she read her books or learned about tactics, magical theory, or even local history from Deirdre and Lee. One wild day, filled with energy and excited at the sharp scent of the distant sea on the wind, Deirdre had even agreed to show her how a human can outrun a horse over a short distance. The sheer joy of getting to the marker ahead of her mounted master was exhilarating, as was Deirdre’s whooped praise.

“Alright,” Deirdre said when they got back to the carriage to rest the horse and make an early fire. “I’m gonna kill both of you and then myself if I have to eat jerky again.”

“I did tell you we were out of decent rations,” Lee said with an air of serenity.

“Rub it in. Kid, you want to take a crack at hunting small game with that crossbow?” Deirdre raised her eyebrows at her student, who practically bounced in excitement.

And then immediately came down, with a suspicious look on her face. “What’s the catch?”

“You like cute animals?” Deirdre asked.

“I - yes?”

“I’m literally asking you point-blank if you’d like to kill one.” Deirdre watched as Monika frowned in realization and then looked away, staring out across the road. “I realize it’s a bit of an ask. It’s not an order, I can kill my own game. But this might be something you end up doing down the line, to survive or for the taste or even to help folks cull the population. It might be best to see how it sits with you now.”

“Cull…when there’s too many of them, and they’re damaging things?” Monika hazarded. “We learned about that in the biology courses.”

The pale warlock nodded. “Prey animals get too populous and they end up hurting themselves too. Predators like humans step in to correct that problem so we can all move on with our lives. So, I’ll ask you again: you in?”

Deirdre waited for an answer, and when she didn’t get one she went to the carriage to get the crossbow and its bolts. The pale warlock busied herself checking it over and getting the quarrel situated at her hip, where it stuck out against the tools and vials there.

“Is - is it okay if I just watch?” Monika asked, from where she was standing. Deirdre looked back at her, and for just a moment Monika could have sworn her hard master’s face was almost sad.

“Yeah,” Deirdre agreed. “Just stay quiet, and stick near me. Alright?”

“Alright.”

The two of them set out from the road into the short grasses that surrounded it, Deirdre ahead and Monika trailing close behind. The pale warlock had been pleasantly surprised to learn that her apprentice needed no lessons in walking silently - sneaking up on her fellows and surprising them had been one of Monika’s favorite pastimes - but Monika watched Deirdre carefully even for all of that. Someone able to move in all that iron mail without making a noise seemed superhuman to the girl. Monika kept her eyes down, on the grass, until she noticed that her master’s gaze seemed to move - never much, but her head went up and down, left and right, in regular patterns.

“Animals, including people, know when they’re being watched,” Deirdre murmured, barely audible over the sea-scented wind. “Monsters and demons don’t necessarily. It’s more than what we hear, what we smell, what we see. We sense it, we _feel_ it. Best theory I’ve ever heard is that it’s a kind of latent empathy. A good hunter, a good assassin, has to learn to work around it.”

Monika let ‘assassin’ go for the time being. “Not beat it?” she asked, in an equally low voice.

Deirdre shrugged. “Sometimes it just can’t be beat, but you can work in a way that makes it easier to avoid. Look at animals and people through your peripheral. Don’t stare at them, and don’t focus; try to just take the whole world in. I don’t expect you to be good at it on your first try, but you’re about to have plenty of time to practice. Boat rides get…interesting.”

There seemed to be so much to see! Even as short as it was (and what cut it this short? Did Westkill send someone to tend to miles of grassland?) the grass rippled in the wind, cut through with splashes of color where wildflowers grew. Something fluffy - seeds? Hair? Spiderlings? - drifted past on the breeze, vanishing against white clouds only to appear again when it crossed the blue spring sky. Monika thought she’d get vertigo from trying to keep track of it all, but she did her best to follow Deirdre’s advice ( _don’t focus_ ) and just take things in.

Something was moving against the ripples of the grass. Monika pointed, and her master took aim. The hare that emerged from a break in the grass took the bolt at chest height and went down with a wet sound, blood seeping from the wound. Deirdre moved immediately; she set down the crossbow and crossed the distance to the hare while Monika held her hand to her mouth and watched with wide eyes.

A cut to the throat from a double-edged dagger finished what the bolt had started. The hare bled out in seconds.

Deirdre looked back at the horror etched on Monika’s face, her expression just as dead as her green eyes. She sighed, and looked back down at the hare. “Tell me what you think of death.”

“What I -” the shake in Monika’s voice became an explosion of anger. “ _Fuck you_! And fuck death! He -”

“She,” Deirdre interrupted sharply, surprising Monika just as the apprentice was building up her rage. “…All hares are she. Even if they’re not.” Deirdre yanked the bolt from the animal’s corpse. “She didn’t suffer, Monika. It’s a better end than she could have expected.”

“She didn’t have to die.”

“That’s the thing though, isn’t it?” The pale warlock began to skin the hare, dressing her kill in quick, professional motions. “Everything has to die. If it doesn’t die, it never lived. Everyone pays to play, kid. One of these days I’m gonna get got, and so will you. I can hope it’s as clean as this.”

Monika looked at the hare, and then her master. “It won’t be,” she said, and then she turned and ran back to the carriage and Lee.

“Yeah,” Deirdre agreed to herself. “Probably not.”

*

There were monsters swarming over the pier. A ship, presumably the one they were to board, was anchored off-shore and well out of reach of the chalk-white creatures, each looking like a child’s stick figure with claws and only enough flesh to make the claws work. Deirdre had Lee stop the carriage well out of immediate sight of the things, and then got out to assess the situation.

“There’s so many of them,” Monika said. “How are we supposed to get through?”

“I can take them,” Deirdre answered. “I’m just…going to be out of action for a little while after. Lee.”

“Ma’am,” Lee said.

Deirdre nodded her head at Monika. “You’ll continue her combat training while I’m down for the count. Answer her questions as best you can, and take care of her. It goes without saying that I’d like her in as many pieces as I got her in.”

Monika looked away. “No mention of emotional damage - hey!”

Deirdre had a grip on the girl’s shoulder, iron-hard; her dead green eyes came alive with wrath. “Don’t you ever say shit to _me_ about emotional damage, _kid_. Stand here and watch that fucking hare get her revenge. I’ll quiz you on it later.”

Lee put his hand on Deirdre’s wrist. “You’re hurting her.”

A second. Two. The quiet sea breeze was cut by the snarl of the aimless monsters as they milled and lashed at one another and howled at the ship anchored off the shore.

Deirdre let go. “Don’t move.”

Monika and Lee watched the pale warlock go down the hill towards the pier, taking a vial from her belt as she went. The apprentice rubbed her shoulder and did her best to glare. Worry and anger were having a competition for control of the tightness in her chest, and worry seemed to be winning.

Lee sighed. “She did not want you to have to see her like this.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Monika said. “She’s done a pretty good job being a weird bitch this entire time.” The apprentice looked incredulously at Lee when he just gave her a grunt and a nod. “Don’t be so quick to agree with me, damn. Isn’t she your friend?”

“And this means I’m supposed to lie about her to others?” Lee asked. “She is a weird bitch. But she is also more and, sometimes, less.”

“…Which is she now?”

“Less,” Lee answered. “And about to be lesser still.”

Monika looked back at her master just in time to see Deirdre finish filling a tiny syringe from the contents of her vial. The pale warlock carefully, oh-so-very-carefully, slid the needle into her eye (back uphill, Monika gagged and tasted vomit at the back of her throat) and emptied the syringe into her veins. Monika’s master took the needle back out with equal care, wiped it down with a cloth, and put it back in its holster at her belt, along with the vial.

Before Monika’s eyes, Deirdre staggered, and bent over almost double, clasping her knees for support. The apprentice heard her master let out a miserable sound, something choked and awful, before forcing herself upright to walk towards the knot of monsters. They’d finally noticed her, and came bounding forward in a pack, only to _stop_ as they crossed near Deirdre. The clawed monstrosities slowed, staggered, and hit the ground in heaps as they passed into range of the pale warlock’s affinity. Soon the sound of their miserable sobs drowned out even the swell of the sea.

One after another, Deirdre cut their throats and left them to water the road with blood, and not one lifted a finger to stop her.

“Drugs,” Lee said, without looking away. “It took most of her apprenticeship to get them right, and they are not always easy to make. Your master can override the emotions of others with her own, making them feel as she feels in place of their own emotions. In normal circumstances she can evoke anger, or sorrow, without assistance.”

Monika thought back to her testing, on her last day at the Academy. “Works really well on people,” she said around a tight throat.

“Yes. But in extraordinary circumstances, or against things which are not people, or…” Lee hesitated, “if she needs a more positive emotion, she uses the drugs. She forces herself to have the required feelings.”

Deirdre staggered to the end of the pier, covered in blood, sobbing with every breath. She sank to her knees before forming the energy ball that Monika had come to know so well in her schooling and throwing it high in the air, where it burst like a firework. The apprentice could see the tiny figures of the ship’s crew begin to scurry to their stations.

“That can’t be good for her,” Monika said at last.

Lee gave the girl a rueful smile. “To quote the woman herself: no shit.”

*

The sea voyage was everything Deirdre had promised. Lookout duty, in case of aquatic monsters or demons, gave her plenty of opportunity to practice looking without focusing, and hours of idle time meant lessons with Lee in the crafts of combat, survival, ropes and knots, and orienteering. Monika even found time for her books.

Monika’s master stayed locked in a cabin. She took no meals and no visitors, and gave only choked sobs or wild, furious screams to any disturbance at her door. Monika tried to talk to her only once, and turned away at the answer she got.

“What did she say?” Lee asked, in his softest voice, while Monika stripped down to a light shirt for combat drills.

“Tell me what you think of death,” the apprentice said. She threw her cloak down on the deck and raised her fists in a defensive stance. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Two days later, they arrived.

*

**Vellkill Island, Grevelt. Waning Spring**

Deirdre staggered off of the ship last, after Monika and Lee, after the crew, after even the captain, looking more than ever like a living corpse. Her pale skin had a sickly pallor, and her dead gaze was bloodshot and red-rimmed, from crying and from screaming. The way she slouched reminded Monika of a puppet, dragged by some child across the docks.

“My master had those made,” Deirdre said once she reached her apprentice. “The drugs I use. They were his idea first, and I perfected them. But he made me do it, yanked me about by my tattoo, and then made me feel however he needed to, whenever he needed to.”

“What happened?” Monika asked. “To him, that is. To your master.”

Deirdre let out a short breath through her nose. “We took a job, after he turned me loose, up north in Osklo. We got stupid, almost got caught. I took a hit of what you saw me take earlier, when the patrols were closing in. Monsters, they don’t know what to do with despair. They just go down and go…almost to sleep. People, though, people are pretty good at it. Whole patrol killed themselves, my master along with them. I still remember his last words. Woulda killed him for them myself if I’d been thinking straight, trying to tell me he was sorry, like he _got_ to be sorry. No.”

Monika took a shuddering breath and fought the urge to look away. “What’s going to happen to me?”

Deirdre did look away, to the port fortress of Vellkill with its high walls and shipyard, dominated by a central keep of thick stone that mounted trebuchet for the island’s defense. “How honest do you want me to be, kid?”

“Don’t lie to me. Not…not after all this. Just don’t.”

The pale warlock nodded. Her body shook, tiny tremors all over that made her breathing shudder and shake. “I picked you out because I need a partner. A working partner, for higher risk jobs, with a better payout. There’s someone else I need to help. Someone…close to me. With more money, I can pay off her debts, and get going while the getting is good. She volunteered to help but I…I can’t, I can’t let her do that.”

Realization dawned, cold and cruel, in Monika’s mind. “You picked me to die in her place.”

“It’s not the first plan, but…yes. I picked you out to die, little patriot. But if you don’t, if you live, you’ll have the best training in your field that you can get. Walk from this apprenticeship with a word from me to back you up and you could see yourself in an officer’s posting, or even in the Crimson Daggers. And if you don’t like the taste of death by the time we’re done, I’ve got favors from people who wake up in a cold sweat with my face in their dreams. They’ll teach you anything you could ever want to learn.”

Monika looked out at the port at last. The two stood there on the ends of the docks, watching others go about their lives, their jobs, their duties.

“One more thing, kid.” Deirdre’s voice was barely there. “You get out the other side of this, after my girl’s free, and you’re still sore about it? You take your best shot at me. All the Prism knows I deserve to die. I fuck you up bad enough that you want me to pay that debt up, I won’t get in your way.”

As if by unspoken signal, the two - master and apprentice - looked one another in the eyes. After a moment, Monika offered her hand out. “You’ve got a deal.”

Deirdre shook her apprentice’s hand and then jerked her head towards the fortress. “Let’s get going. We’ve missed a few days of personal time, and we need to get you started on unlocking your affinity. But, first -”

“Please don’t.”

Deirdre didn’t even slow down. “Tell me what you think of death.”


	2. In It To The Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monika meets the master of Vellkill island and begins her magical training. Poorly.

**Vellkill Island, Grevelt. Early Autumn**

“Tell me what you think of death,” Deirdre ordered. Monika spat a thin line of blood into the dirt of the training yard and shook her head; the older warlock beckoned another soldier into the ring, bringing it to four on one. Her teenage apprentice squeezed the handle of the dulled practice knife in her hand and lowered her stance. “They _will_ hurt you, kid. Last chance.”

“Eat me,” Monika growled. 

Deirdre shrugged. “Have it your way. En garde!”

The first soldier in caught a stomp to the side of his knee that shattered it with a grisly snap; Monika turned with the motion, clocking him upside the temple with the hilt of her knife. The teen whirled, seizing her victim’s falling body and using him to catch a pair of slashes directed at where her torso had just been; the man’s fellow soldiers recoiled.

Their mistake. Monika threw her shield at one, forcing the soldier to drop her knife and catch the man, and faked a lunge at the other. He fell for it, moving to meet her; the teen faded past him, slipping through his peripheral vision. The dull edge of her knife touched his throat (”Kill” she muttered in a quick, low voice), before she turned and kicked him in the small of the back, sending him sprawling. 

At the sidelines, Deirdre’s eyebrows raised beneath her red hair. “Good!” she called out, even as her apprentice ducked. Her attacker now was a friend she’s made here at Fort Vellkill, a greyshade named Sasha, but you couldn’t tell from the way Monika took them out. The teenager locked their arm and brought them down into a vicious knee that broke the soldier’s nose and sent blood spraying all over the dust.

“I yield!” the last soldier said quickly, still holding her friend. Monika nodded, breathing hard, and sat down in a heap.

Ysabelle, the Fort’s healer, ran over from the sidelines with the look of pure malice they generally reserved for any and all times Deirdre was in their presence. Their assistants brought stretchers to haul the wounded away.

“You know I’m just going to keep asking you,” Deirdre said after a moment, but she got up and brought a canteen of water over to her apprentice. Monika doused her frizzy hair with it, then took small sips. “I can always throw more soldiers at you.”

Monika swallowed a gulp of water. “Sounds like child abuse to me.”

“No shit. Would you like an award for that amazing discovery, you impertinent ass?” Deirdre paused briefly, then switched topics. “You gonna be okay with Sasha?”

The canteen was passed back. Monika swallowed hard, took a deep breath to get air back in her lungs, and nodded. “We talked, awhile ago. They know how it is. I’ll check on them after we’re done for the day. If this is a day when we’re done?”

Deirdre snorted. “I’d ask where you found the nerve but I damn well know where. Let’s -”

“ _Deirdre!_ ” the unmistakable voice of the island’s master called out, thick with outrage. “What in the rippling Void are you doing to my men?”

“Run,” Deirdre muttered, and Monika got up and ran.

*

In the nearly six months that she’d been on Vellkill, Monika had come to know the infirmary intimately. It was state-of-the-art, as these things go; spacious, well-stocked, in possession of a pair of warlocks with healing affinities and trained staff besides. Though the island rarely had to deal with military attack or mass monster incursions, it was prepared for them.

These days what it mostly dealt with was her and Deirdre and the latter’s idea of training exercises. Monika winced as she passed the guy whose knee she’d broken - he’d be in here for the better part of a month. Ysabelle’s main power was to speed up natural healing, essentially passively, and the Fort’s other healer was away getting some license or other renewed and wouldn’t be back until spring at the earliest.

“I hope you’re proud of yourself,” Ysabelle snapped, the moment Monika crossed into the threshold. The teenager caught a bundle of medical supplies. “Go dress Sasha’s nose. You and that Master of yours are a plague on honest people.”

“I didn’t choose this!” Monika protested.

“She says, knowing damn well she could have just answered Deirdre’s stupid question,” Ysabelle mocked. Monika let out an exasperated sigh and went to go treat her friend.

|She’s stressed.| Sasha signed; the greyshade was mute, and had been since birth. |That was a good hit.|

“You coulda slipped it,” Monika chided, as she got to work. “You haven’t been keeping up on your practice. That’ll get you killed.”

|By _what_?| Sasha asked; the look on their face made Monika laugh so hard she had to stop what she was doing. |Things don’t happen to Fort Vellkill. We happen to things. Deirdre, mostly, happens to things.|

Monika sighed and got back to work. “Yeah, I bet. We still haven’t worked on unlocking my affinity. It’s been months, but I haven’t exactly brought it up to her either…”

The greyshade soldier tilted their head at their younger friend and signed a question. |Why not? You bring up other stuff, like when you wanted to learn rappelling.|

Sasha drew back, gingerly touching their nose to check it while their younger friend sighed and looked away. Monika seemed to sigh a lot any time she wasn’t around Deirdre. The young warlock’s master got her blood up like nothing else, and Sasha wasn’t the only once concerned about that. It was, what, Midsummer that Monika’d lost her temper during a sparring exercise and fucked Otoya up bad enough that she’d been sent home with a medical discharge? The kid had been torn up about it for weeks. Now she just looked out the window instead of at the people she’d so recently maimed.

Monika looked back over at her friend. “I guess because she said we can only do one at a time. I keep telling myself she’ll stop this part when I’m ready, but what if it’s another test of…of…my nerve? My judgement? Am I overthinking this?”

|You could talk to Lee| Sasha pointed out.

“I could -”

Shouting, through the window. Deirdre’s voice, her usually flat and dead inflection colored by a hate only rarely heard from her: “You _cannot_ give orders to _me_ about _my apprentice_! I have _absolute authority_ over her education and if you think for one _fucking second_ -”

The master of the Fort cut her off, his own voice a deep bass roar: “You forget yourself, Silencer! I own you and all that you have, are, and could be. If I tell you to drown that _brat_ you will.”

Monika rushed to the window, Sasha close on her heels. Deirdre had her employer’s head by the hair, her dagger - glowing a dull cherry red, like forge-metal - pressing into his throat. All around them, soldiers leveled crossbows.

“If she so much as scratches me, throw her bitch from a window,” the man snarled. 

“You can’t play this game with me forever,” Deirdre warned, her voice back to its low, lifeless tone. “You lay a hand on my apprentice and I will cut that hand off. You speak her name and I’ll rip the tongue from your mouth, and before I do it I’ll call the dogs in so they can hold you down for me. Are we clear?”

“Stand down,” the island’s master ordered. “My threats move faster than yours, Silencer.”

A heartbeat. Two. 

Dierdre let go of her superior officer, who immediately backhanded her hard enough to put the pale warlock into the dirt. His men started forward, only to be halted by a sharp gesture.

“From whom do you take your orders?” the island’s master demanded.

(Up above, Monika’s fists clenched hard enough that her nails cut her palms, drawing blood.)

Deirdre drew in a shaky breath and picked herself up. She sheathed her knife before standing at attention with a sharp salute. “Colonel Jared Ashe, sir.”

“Good,” the Colonel spat. “Tame your cur. Dismissed.”

Monika took off running for the stairs back down. She didn’t stop long enough to catch Sasha’s hurried |Wait!|.

Or the greyshade’s resigned |Goodbye then.|

*

Deirdre’s furious bellow of “to your quarters!” had shocked Monika enough that the apprentice obeyed without even a token argument, running like a little girl from her mother’s wrath. Hours later, with the sun setting, she was still up with a mixture of anger and worry, trying and failing to focus on her book. She hadn’t touched her fiction in months (admittedly in part because she’d read and re-read it to death); the book on the bed in front of her concerned locksmithing and lock-breaking, not that it was doing her much good, both because the door was unlocked and because she’d read page fifteen six times now.

A knock at the door, and then Lee’s voice: “May I come in?”

Monika smiled to herself. Deirdre did the same thing but she always made such a big deal out of it. At first Monika had thought her master was trying to impress her with how tolerant and accepting of the teen’s need for space she was being, but lately the apprentice had come to the conclusion that the person Deirdre was trying to convince of that was, well. Deirdre.

“Yeah, it’s open.” Monika sat up and closed her book while Lee slid in and closed the door behind him. Deirdre’s factotum looked as sharp as ever, though on base he’d traded his traditional suits for a sharply pressed uniform. You could shave with the creases.

“You are not in trouble. You’ve done nothing wrong,” Lee began. “Deirdre wanted me to assure you of that earlier but I…needed to be certain she was okay in her own company, before I left her side.”

“That man had no right,” Monika whispered.

Lee nodded. “But the situation is more complex than that, to the great misfortune and sorrow of many. And there are those who would say your master has no right to treat you as she does.”

“I picked her.”

“No. She picked you.” Lee crossed the room in slow steps and put a hand on Monika’s shoulder. “I have been asked to reiterate the offer Deirdre made when you landed on this shore. Do you wish to leave?”

The apprentice laughed, a bitter sort of laugh that sounded all too much like her master’s to Lee’s ears. “Don’t insult me, alright? If I wasn’t going to leave when she told me point-blank that she picked me up as a human sacrifice, I’m not gonna leave now. I’m in it to the death, Lee. You hear me? To the death.”

Lee closed his eyes and sighed. “You have no idea what that means,” he murmured. “But so be it. You are summoned to Deirdre’s quarters to begin your magical training. Sasha and I will take over your physical training regimen. I will not lie, it will be greatly reduced. I believe you discussed this with your master before?” Monika nodded. “Then attend to her, quickly.”

The apprentice stood, shook Lee’s hand, and then left as quickly as possible. She still wasn’t certain of her own technical rank, but no one seemed to expect her to salute and she wasn’t about to start until someone told her the rules. Lee would close her door behind him. He always did.

Deirdre’s quarters were in the highest room of the tallest tower, because of course they were. They weren’t used to meet or instruct Monika a whole lot, in part because no one wanted to deal with the amount of stairs they entailed. Still, the apprentice felt almost lighthearted when she ascended to the top floor and found the door open. She’d been looking forward to this for awhile.

Her master was more of a wreck than usual. Deirdre had cloaked herself in metal again, the full rusty regalia she favored out in the field, and her eyes were bloodshot from crying. Monika stopped at the door with her hands folded behind her back. 

She’d long since given up on trying to comfort her master in moments like these.

“Lee told you it’s time, then,” Deirdre croaked. “There’s a couple of options, and surprisingly enough it’s not between bad and bad. Just annoying and frustrating. Option one is I take control and burn you through this. Now, that could be nothin’, or it could be an instant eternity of searing fucking agony that will scar you for life. Based on your ball, I’m leaning more towards nothing, but the risk is always there. Or you can try and breach on your own, which takes longer but has no risk. You can come in, by the way.”

Monika stepped fully into the room and pulled the door shut behind her. “Why offer to take control here when you wouldn’t for my combat training?”

“This is just to open the door, kid. Training with your affinity can only happen once we’ve got an idea of what it is.”

Ah. Monika nodded and drifted over towards the window. She could see the spot down below where earlier, Deirdre had -

“I’m not entertaining other conversation topics, kid.”

“Fuck you too,” Monika said in a light tone. “Why didn’t you kill him? How is it that you just hate everyone all the time without trying but you can’t stand up to that piece of -”

Deirdre appeared behind her apprentice. Monika hadn’t heard or felt her move

“It is the business of the dead to hate the living,” Deirdre murmured in her apprentice’s ear. “And I am not having this conversation tonight. What’s it gonna be?”

Monika thought it over a while longer, and then turned to meet her master’s dead green gaze. “Burn me through it.”

Deirdre nodded and slid away from her apprentice. “Never did lack for guts. Step into the center of the room. Safest for us both, all things considered.” 

Monika did as instructed, clasping her hands in front of herself. She shifted uncertainly in place. Deirdre’d never actually used the tattoo before. Was there a warning? A build-up? She tapped a foot and _her mind was slip-zip-slip-sliding, grease on grease on rubber, look closely, look closely, watch it bend, watch it_ flip!

When did the floor become the ceiling?

Wait. Monika was falling.

“Ah fuck,” was the last thing Monika heard from her master before her head hit the edge of Deirdre’s bed and she blacked out.


	3. Death Warmed Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monika recovers and meets her master's captive wife

**Vellkill Island, Grevelt. Early Autumn**

Voices, at some level of volume. Monika’s ears were telling her brain ‘normal speaking voice’ but her throbbing skull was reporting ‘shouts fit to crack the dome of the sky and rain its pieces down on the wretched kingdoms of Man’. The teen groaned and rolled over so she could clap half the pillow over her head; the sound interrupted the voices, praise be to the Prism.

For all of half a second; Ysabelle’s voice came from right next to the damn bed. “What _happened_?” the healer demanded, full of accusation.

Monika groaned, rolled onto her back, and opened her eyes. Sasha, Deirdre, and Ysabelle were gathered around the bed; Monika pointed at her soldier friend. “They ask the questions,” the girl said. “And I hit my head on accident.”

Ysabelle’s face colored slightly; she opened her mouth, saw Monika flinch from the sound she knew was coming, and pointed wordlessly at Sasha instead. The mute greyshade’s fingers moved in slow sign language to make it easier on her hurt friend: |You’re certain it was an accident?|

“Yeah I’m certain,” Monika snapped. “We were trying to unlock my affinity and I flipped ass-over-teakettle out of nowhere.”

Deirdre cleared her throat ( _ow fuck why_ ) and spoke up in her softest murmur. “Not out of nowhere. You’ve got a kind of telekinesis. When you started tapping your foot and your affinity unlocked it just…continued the motion.”

Ysabelle thrust her hand in Deirdre’s face. “ _You do not get a say here, Silencer_!”

“If you think -”

Monika hit something only vaguely familiar inside her head; both women were opening their mouths to shout, and both of them were yanked down by the jaw like some invisible person had grabbed their chins. Deirdre caught herself on the foot of the bed and stopped the healer from hitting the floor by getting a fistful of Ysabelle’s shirt.

“My head hurts,” Monika said, a bit sheepishly. “Please be quiet.”

Deirdre looked at Ysabelle and when she was sure the healer was steady, let go of her shirt. The two warlocks stood up and dusted themselves up, the healer looking mollified, the Silencer proud.

|You hit your head pretty hard, but you should be fine| Sasha signed, attracting the attention of the other two. |You should spend a few days in bed around Ysabelle and then rest a further week.|

Deirdre nodded and signed herself, her motions somewhat stiffer and more forced than Sasha’s easy fluidity: |I’ve brought you some new books. We’re going to have to be careful with your affinity while you’re training. I need to talk to the Colonel, get you an appointment with my -| she made a sign Monika hadn’t seen before. The apprentice tilted her head and repeated it.

“Wife,” Deirdre explained, as softly as she could. Distant pain brought her dead green gaze to something like life. “…My wife. Here.” Monika’s master gingerly set a stack of books on the bed next to her apprentice’s head before sweeping out of the room, ignoring her student’s call to come back.

|She was very worried| Sasha signed. |Ysabelle thought -|

Monika waved Sasha’s explanation off and set her head back down on the pillow. “She wouldn’t,” the teenager said. “…Not like that. If Deirdre wanted to kick my ass she’d do it in front of everyone.”

“Hardly reassuring,” Ysabelle murmured in acid tones.

“Would you like an award for that amazing discovery?” Monika snapped; she winced at the sound of her own voice. “I’m going back to sleep now.”

*

On the one hand, Deirdre’s stack of books had been sizeable and included several new ones by Elma Rule, Monika’s favorite author. On the other, Monika read fast and with three days to do nothing but tear through them and antagonize Ysabelle she quickly ran out of things to do and ended up putzing around the infirmary, assisting with light chores and occasionally reading medical texts. The apprentice’s relationship with Ysabelle might have been strained on the best of days, but the two of them could talk first aid and medical trivia like they were old friends. It was…warm, in a way.

Still boring, but warm.

Sasha came in as they could, but with their nose well on the way to recovery there was no rest for the greyshade soldier and certainly no extra time to spend with a teenager they barely knew. So it was that Monika’s release from the infirmary was met with great impatience. Lee met her just outside the medical facility.

“Deirdre has had to attend on orders from the Colonel,” the factotum explained. “She should return soon, but your audience with Raquel, the Armorer, has been granted. We should attend upon it with all haste.”

Monika hesitated. “Is Deirdre in trouble?”

Lee shook his head. “She pays a high price for any contact with her wife, even through indirect channels. You will understand when you meet Raquel. Come with me, please.”

Monika was taken to a tower of the fort across from Deirdre’s rooms and struck with the impression that she was going to the very top. That impression wasn’t wrong; Lee mounted the stairs with a look as long-suffering as Monika felt at that moment, with the apprentice trailing behind him.

Lee spoke up as they walked, his professional tone undercut by something - well, something else. “Raquel, as you have gathered, is a warlock of a particular specialty. She does not receive many visitors. Feel empowered to speak freely to her, but keep your opinions on the Colonel and the military either positive or to yourself. You could cause great harm to her, or to Deirdre. Do you understand?”

Monika swallowed. “I understand.”

The stairs didn’t let out at a door into a normal room; instead they came up to a landing where two guards stood at attention in front of the bars to a cell. It was abysmally hot up there, and the reason why soon became apparent: behind the bars was a workshop like Monika had never seen before. A small forge dominated one corner, situated near an anvil and an array of smithing tools - hammers, tongs, files, buckets and more - but the rest of the room was hardly empty. Various shelves were full of vials (all with tiny labels, some filled with liquid, others with powder), though one groaned instead beneath the weight of thick-spined books. A workbench took up almost an entire wall and was littered with half-finished projects all in grey-black iron, the color reminding Monika so much of Deirdre that it sent a stabbing pang through the apprentice’s chest.

There was a cot in the corner, right up against the edge of the work bench, with a dark-skinned woman sitting up on it with a book in her hand; Monika realized with a certain amount of ‘heh, neat’ that they both had their frizzy hair tied back - Monika for fighting, this other woman for her forge-work if the teen was any judge. Something seemed to be wrong with her left leg, though.

Then the woman in the cell marked her place in the book, set it aside, and retrieved a crutch from up against the workbench. What was wrong became quite clear when she stood slowly, revealing no left leg whatsoever.

The prisoner’s voice was bright and clear, though, not happy but optimistic in its own way: “You must be Monika. Deirdre writes a lot about you.” She made her way over to the bars of the cell and stuck one calloused hand out, which Monika shook. “Raquel, the Armorer. It’s nice to meet you at last.”

Monika managed a smile in return. “I’m glad to meet you too. I wish I could say Deirdre’s told me a lot about you…”

Raquel shook her head. “Don’t worry too much about it. You’re cleared to come in once I get away from the bars. I’m going to be sizing you up for something.”

“Something?” Monika asked.

“Something,” Raquel agreed. “I won’t know until after I size you up.” She made her way over to the anvil and sat, heavily; one guard unlocked the cell door and ushered Monika inside before shutting and locking it once more. “It’s my affinity, you see. I make tools that work with the affinities of others. My products can do quite a bit, but it all has to be custom work. The flowers I made for Deirdre wouldn’t do a thing for you.”

Raquel got back up from her cot and hobbled over to Monika. The teen got an odd feeling - not bad, but a lot like when Ysabelle sized up her injuries or conducted a checkup - and stood still. After a moment, Monika folded her hands together in front of herself.

Raquel spoke up to break the awkward silence, her voice gentle: “I don’t bite, I’m just…working. Paperwork on the appointment says you’re from Westkill. Tell me about that?”

Monika blinked in surprise. “Paperwork? Why would you have -”

The Armorer laughed and shook her head. “I still get paid. It’s funny, isn’t it? I can’t leave this room or go out to buy anything, but I still get paid. An attorney who’s never seen my face manages my funds. I’m told it’s quite a large amount by now. I need to touch you now.”

Monika held quite still, but nothing more than Raquel’s finger lifting her chin happened. The contact tingled, like her skin was on the verge of going numb. “Why iron?” she asked after a second.

“Part of the deal, I’m afraid.” Raquel laughed again, her voice still gentle, almost airy. “It’s funny. I knew a guy who could command a single kind of fish. Trout, specifically. There was a three year to-do when his power suggested that a species had been wrongly classified. But then you get people who can mimic affinities, or manipulate fire, or teleport. I make iron tools for others, and somehow it’s one of the most valuable talents the world thinks I have to offer.”

Raquel took her hand back and went to the work bench, motioning with her head for Monika to follow. She settled into a high chair in front of it and pulled down sheets of paper and pencils to draft with. 

“What would you do, if you could stop doing this?” Monika asked, watching the Armorer begin to sketch in quick lines.

Raquel shrugged. “Paint, maybe. Or write. Some days I think I could run a factory but after all of this I’m not sure I want to manage another forge. This one’s been quite enough.”

“What about your affinity?”

That earned Monika a curious look from the Armorer. “When Deirdre offered you an apprenticeship, did she ask about your affinity? About your magic?”

_Tell me what you think of death._

“No,” Monika answered. “She says it doesn’t matter for her work. That she’s happy to plan around whatever I have because the important things are the skills.”

Raquel nodded; she turned her chair to face Monika fully, to look the teen in the eyes. “I don’t really care for or about my affinity. I don’t consider it part of my identity. Other warlocks feel differently, and that’s their right. But I didn’t ask for this, and I did not ask for society to judge me on a skill set I’ve come to resent. You have a curious kind of telekinesis. Is that who you are? Will Monika of Westkill be changed forever because of it?”

Monika looked away. “You two both know how to ask questions that make a girl feel like shit.”

“We do that, but for what little it’s worth I don’t mean to belittle you. It’s not often I get to talk with someone who cares to listen to me. There’s no need to have a debate if you’d prefer to talk about something else.” Raquel turned back to the workbench. “I did mention writing,” she offered.

“…If being a warlock’s not an important part of who we are, why’s it all set up like this? Aside from…you know…the odd kid that explodes.” Monika winced through that last sentence. “It’s what we all have in common.”

“Is it though?” Raquel asked. “What makes your power like mine? What about mine like Deirdre’s? You and the Reaper, what do you have in common? How about the Reaper with an empath? We finally have a point of comparison with Deirdre and the empath but even then they’re opposites.” The Armorer shook her head. “…No, it doesn’t matter at all. Not really. Everything else about you is so much more important. Or it would be, if people weren’t dead set on being strange about it. You can go, if you’d like. I need some time to confer with Deirdre, once she returns, and plan out a tool.”

Monika shifted in her place. “What if I wouldn’t like? You did say something about writing.”

Raquel gave the girl a stunning smile. “There’s some samples of my work on that shelf there, if you’re curious. Deirdre’s the only one that reads them and her feedback’s a little suspect, given that she adores me.”

“Is…is it…is it bad that I literally cannot envision what that looks like?”

The captive warlock snorted at her workbench, her pencil jagging a line across the paper. “That sounds like the Deirdre experience all right. She likes you a lot, you know. She thought you’d be a lot different. Do you like her?”

“She’s cruel,” Monika admitted, while she searched the shelf, taking down small sheafs of paper full of handwritten stories with titles in huge, flowery text. “To almost everyone. Even the people she loves, like Lee. She’s angry, and scary, and hurtful.”

“But do you like her?”

Monika sighed. “…Yeah. That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“I married her, so…” Raquel shrugged. “Your call.”

*

Well-reasoned arguments (”I’m going stir crazy and I swear on the _fucking Prism_ that I will make it your problem.”) broke down Sasha and Lee’s resistance to starting Monika’s new physical training regimen early. Unfortunately, there were Complications.

“They’re really just not hitting me, huh,” Monika noted, watching yet another sandbag bounce from a collision course to swing around her on the end of its rope. This portion of Lee’s carefully constructed obstacle course (isolated postings and bored soldiers make a good combination when you need something done) had been filled with swinging sandbags operated by enthusiastic soldiers, most of whom had been on the receiving end of Monika’s combat training. The teen watched in vague fascination as Sasha hurled her bag directly at Monika only for it to get blown around by some invisible force that made the apprentice’s head _flex_ somehow.

“Get out of the gauntlet,” Lee called, from the very end of his patience. “You’re going to hurt yourself!”

Monika gestured wordlessly at the sandbags.

“Magic takes energy, remember? You’re gonna pass out if you hit your limits.”

Oh, right, that. Monika walked out the side of the gauntlet and high-fived Sasha on her way past towards Lee and, more importantly, water. She caught a canteen from the factotum and took several small sips before finding a spot of wall to lean against.

“Wish I could do that on purpose,” Monika confided. “…Guess that’s what Deirdre’s for. Well…I mean…”

“It’s in her job description, yes,” Lee agreed. “And now Sasha and I need to revise our design. And after all that hard work. Miss Monika, I know that Deirdre drives you hard, but you really must take more care of yourself. Your master would be furious if you managed to hurt yourself to no profit.”

“No profit, huh.”

Sasha punched Monika on the arm; the greyshade caught a spot of wall next to their friend and flicked their hands in rapid sign. |Training hurts. Hurt isn’t training. I know you’re not dumb.|

Monika covered up the look on her face by taking a swig from her canteen, at least until a commotion from the start of the obstacle course as soldiers scrambled to attention. Monika and her friends turned their heads and caught Deirdre dragging herself through the suddenly but _extremely_ disciplined ranks.

“I know I put you on rest for a week,” Deirdre said in a flat voice. One eye had a dark circle beneath it; the other was bruised. “But here you are, not resting.”

“You look like death warmed over,” Monika said, avoiding the topic entirely. She reached out, gingerly touching her master’s face. “Are you okay?”

Deirdre snorted. “I’m dead. It’s bad for your health. What happened here?”

“It’s faster if I just show you.” Monika stepped back into the center of the gauntlet and whistled sharply. The soldiers present looked to Deirdre, who nodded, and then hurled their sandbags with all of their might. The twisting paths they took around the young apprentice sent two crashing into each other in bursts of sand and tattered cloth.

“I can’t seem to make it stop,” Monika admitted, feeling a touch of heat rising in her cheeks.

Deirdre nodded to herself. “Lee, you and I need to get more food in this girl until she’s got a handle on her shit. Sasha, you win the paperwork prize, and just so you know I’m deliberately not looking at you because I really do not give a shit about the objections I know you’re about to make. Monika?”

“Yes ma’am,” the apprentice answered, standing at reflexive attention.

“Good fight. But now you’re going on rest for your assigned time or I’m going to take you to every landmark on this island and whip your ass while I enjoy the view. You catch me?”

“Yes ma’am!”


	4. Death by Misadventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monika learns about magical injury and meets Serethen of Javier, one of her master's peers

**Vellkill Island, Grevelt. Late Autumn**

Monika was intently working her way through her linguistics assignments when Deirdre punched her directly in the back of the head, not hard enough to see stars but definitely hard enough that the young apprentice’s hunched-over seating posture became her best imitation of a human-skin rug.

“The Void was that for?” Monika asked with her mouth against the stone floor of her room.

“Don’t die of shock, but science,” Deirdre commented. “Notice how you actually got hit?”

“I was there, I remember.”

“How often have you actually been hit in the last two months you ass?” came the acidic rebuttal.

Monika considered this. It certainly hadn’t been for lack of trying on Deirdre’s part or, she had to admit, the various soldiers the two of them had cajoled into helping explore Monika’s affinity. The apprentice’s telekinesis seemed to rely on existing movement, but it could nudge and exaggerate motion with incredible efficiency. Fists, feet, blades, sandbags, hurled bricks (while wearing a helmet, obviously), all had simply nyoomed right past Monika without so much as disturbing her dreadlocks. Deirdre had vetoed attempting to shoot Monika with a crossbow bolt; when Monika had tried it anyway using a rope and pulley system, the bolt had went right past her too.

“Yeah, well - I’d like to see you try it again,” Monika muttered bitterly.

“I’m going to,” Deirdre admitted.

“ _Why?”  
_

“Science,” Deirdre answered, and then she aimed a savage kick at the girl. 

Monika’s previous training paid off; she rolled away from her master’s boot and up into a fighting stance. Deirdre wasn’t in her typical armor, which meant among other things that if Monika hit her it’d actually _hurt_ , except -

\- hold on -

“Are you wearing _padding_?” Monika asked in outrage.

“We’re in a stone room and I expect you’re gonna toss my corpse around like old laundry, of course I’m in padding,” Deirdre answered. “You gonna hit me back or what?”

“What’re we testing?” Monika answered; the two circled each other warily, automatically edging away from Monika’s bed and kicking books out of the space where a fight might happen without taking their eyes off of each other.

“Focus,” came the reply. “I need to know if you can fight and do that at the same time, and how long you can do both or either. What’s the rule?”

“Report any feelings of pain in my head or eyes, halt if you call a halt, magic can hurt me and I need to not be hurt for no reason,” Monika answered dutifully. “I’m no good to you if I have a stroke.”

“You’re no good to yourself if you have a stroke, little patriot. Now _hit me_.”

So Monika hit her.

Like a speeding carriage.

Deirdre took the shot in the solar plexis and hit the stone wall with a _whump_. Dust shook loose from the rafters while the teen stared in vague shock. Deirdre slid to the ground slowly, collapsing onto her ass and sucking in deep, steady breaths.

“Change of plans,” the Silencer managed in what Monika could only call ‘her voice’ for lack of a better word. “I’m just gonna try to hit you and if anyone asks what happened to me, your obstacle course got me.”

“…Yeah, okay.”

This plan went fantastically for Monika. Deirdre not so much.

The teen watched as her master attempted to hit her to absolutely no avail. Deirdre kept her movements small, precise, laying out a flurry of controlled jabs and strikes that all missed by the barest fraction of an inch. For bigger things Monika could usually feel a twinge, the sensation of her affinity being accessed, but here it was more like a background noise as her kinesis just chugged along.

Things got wild with the bigger hits. An attempted haymaker sent Deirdre sprawling into the wall in an ungainly heap. A stomp kick fit to break down a door hit the wall instead, folding the Silencer in on herself like a paper fan and blowing the air out of her lungs. Deirdre tried to wave off Monika’s sheepish attempts to offer her a canteen of water but her body won out over her pride.

The attempt to throw the canteen at Monika sent it sailing out the window and into the presence of the world’s least fortunate chicken and luckiest enlisted man, respectively. 

After what felt like an eternity, but the shifting daylight insisted was about an hour, Deirdre collapsed onto the bed with sweat plastering her red hair to her neck.

“You’re not even tired,” the Silencer complained.

“Nope,” Monika agreed. “I’m only just now feeling any pressure in my head and even then it’s more like I’ve got a cat on me.”

“…This might complicate things.”

“Isn’t it a good sign?” Monika pressed, voice full of hope.

“Depends, how into dying on accident are you in the name of science?”

Monika didn’t answer that.

“You know what I’m about to ask.”

Monika didn’t answer. She just left the room.

*

Monika had long since given up on looking for Ysabelle anywhere but the infirmary; the healer _slept_ there, on a narrow cot that she insisted was her own choice _and_ preference, thank you very much you nosy brat. On the average day there weren’t actually all that many patients, and today there were none. Monika walked in on Ysabelle putting a kettle on for tea.

“That beast finally find a way to maul you again?” Ysabelle asked without looking up, her voice flat.

“I don’t like you talking about her like that,” Monika said in a low voice. “…But no. I wanted to ask you about magical injuries. Erm. Injuries from using your affinity, that is.”

Wordlessly, Ysabelle left the kettle, but when she came back with two cups and set them down Monika knew she was invited to stay. The apprentice sat down cross-legged on one of the medical beds and waited for the healer to speak.

“Understand that I say this in the most technical sense I can,” Ysabelle began after a moment. “The question you’ve just asked is completely useless. Some affinities are inherently dangerous. Some are dangerous because they’re in bodies that aren’t suited to use them, or only partially suited. The Reaper puts his bones straight through his own skin and muscle, and even though he’s adapted to handle that it still hurts. Is that the sort of affinity injury you’re asking about?”

Monika frowned, holding her empty teacup and staring down into it. The porcelain was thin and unusually fine; once again, the apprentice considered asking Ysabelle why she had such an expensive tea service, and once again Monika discarded the question as likely to open up realms of bullshit beyond her imagination. “No, not…well…maybe? What happens to telekinetics?”

“Ah. Hrm. You’re wondering about your limits?” When Monika nodded, Ysabelle started to hrm her way through preparing the tea; picking out the blend she wanted to use, getting out stale cookies (’Why are your cookies so shit when your tea is so expensive?’ was another one of those questions Monika forced herself not to ask on a nearly daily basis), and fetching her cream, butter, and sugar. With the service fully set, the healer once again settled down to look at Monika. “That is…also complicated. Esoteric applications of magic _can_ cause brain injuries, but they don’t always do so. Over-use of magic in general causes damage to what I will, for lack of a better term, classify as the soul, the fallout of which can range from acute depression, catatonic or fugue states, dissociation, or even death. Part of the reason ritual magic is so tightly controlled is because of injuries of this kind.”

The teen nodded, and then frowned again. “Wait, for lack of a better term? Do you not believe in souls?”

Ysabelle gave Monika a wan grin. “I did most of my learning in Haldon, where we have other ideas. That beast training you could tell you more, if you care to ask.”

Monika bristled, and when she saw Ysaballe tensing up in turn the apprentice let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and willed herself to calm down. Lots of people had reasons to dislike Deirdre. Void, _Monika_ disliked Deirdre! Just let it go. Leeeeet it gooooo.

“In your opinion -” Monika began, and then she stopped. Ysabelle said nothing, but when the kettle started whistling _did_ move to make the tea at last, giving the teen a lot more time to think. Getting a warm cup how she liked it (to wit, with enough sugar to kill nine men) to hold in her hands was a comfort of its own. “My master is concerned that if I can’t find a way to regulate my power, I could cause myself brain injuries. Maybe even those soul ones you’re talking about,” Monika explained at last. “How would I be able to tell if I’m close to danger?”

Comprehension dawned over Ysabelle’s expression; the healer added butter and sugar to her tea and stirred it slowly, clearly looking for the words she wanted to say. Monika had seen this look before, when trying to diagnose a tricky problem or injury and explain it in a way her patient would understand. “You probably don’t,” Ysabelle admitted after a moment. “Pain in the head without a clear cause could be one sign, but it might not be; a lot of the brain has no pain receptors, and if you’re bleeding internally you may not know until you have a stroke or even die. Fatigue can also be a sign of excessive magical expenditure, but given your affinity…”

“…I’ll probably be exhausted for other reasons,” Monika finished with a nod. “Hell, even just doing training with Lee leaves me exhausted.”

“Mister Lee puts you through your paces,” Ysabelle agreed. “And if you end up in battle, as you inevitably will given your master’s profession, the emotional toll can make self-awareness even more difficult. Your master is correct - you are in fact in an unknown amount of danger from yourself, and this danger of necessity will need to be addressed.” She and Monika took sips of their tea at the same time, each with expressions of Intense Contemplation on their faces. “If you could be so kind, please explain to Deirdre that you had this conversation with me, and that I may be able to suggest resources to the both of you on this matter which would require her rather more comprehensive powers of requisition. I am willing to speak to her at her earliest convenience.”

“ _Civilly_?” Monika pressed.

Ysabelle sighed.

“Civilly,” the healer agreed, at last. 

*

**Vellkill Island, Grevelt. Midwinter.**

The teleporter arrived without much fanfare, to the immediate panic of those posted there. Monika’s first clue that something was wrong was the mad scramble to put everything up to code, as if some kind of inspection was coming. She had just been about to find Deirdre and ask what was happening when her master found her instead.

“Uniform up, we’re due downstairs,” Deirdre ordered briskly. “And your books have arrived.”

“These related?” Monika hazarded, even as she moved to obey.

“Very. Try to be on your best behavior, the Colonel’s going to have a stick up his ass.”

‘Downstairs’ turned out to be the fort’s parade ground, where the soldiery were assembled in crisp formation. The Colonel (Monika went into her breathing exercises; _stay calm_ , staaaay calm) was conversing in low tones with a tall, bald woman with skin just as dark as Monika’s own, a first since arriving at this Void-curst island. As they got closer, the apprentice noticed the dagger tattoo on the woman’s hand, just like the one on Deirdre’s. 

Another Crimson Dagger. Oh no.

“Silencer,” the tall woman greeted with a nod. “Monika of Westkill. My name is Serethen of Javier. I have brought your requested materials.”

Monika bowed. Deirdre just nodded, and then opened her mouth: “Didn’t expect those until spring opened the seas up. What do you want?”

Serethen laughed and favored Deirdre with a faint smile. “Your reputation precedes you, Silencer. There _is_ an ulterior motive, but it will wait. My journey has been long, and I am exhausted. You and your apprentice will take lunch with me tomorrow, and then we can discuss things.”

“I will have my rooms -” the Colonel began.

“Not you,” Serethen interrupted.

“That is hardly your place, _Agent_ ,” the island’s lord and master hissed, only to be forced to fumble and curse as a sealed envelope was thrown at him. He glared at the tall teleporter, and then at the envelope.

Later, much later, Monika would treasure the exact look on his face during darker times in her life.

“Not you,” Serethen repeated, and then she set down the heavy pack on her back. She gestured between it and Deirdre and then swept away with a quiet dignity and no small amount of self-satisfaction.

“I think I might want to be her when I grow up,” Monika said after a moment.

“Same,” her master echoed.


End file.
